


Replay, Relive, & Redo

by KorrohShipper



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Steggy - Freeform, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, The Author Regrets Everything, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-16 04:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21030269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KorrohShipper/pseuds/KorrohShipper
Summary: Camp Lehigh, New Jersey in 1970 wasn't the best choice to get the Space Stone.Steve knew the answer—it was 1945.





	1. Replay

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this gem of a short film. It's called "Joseph's Reel". I highly recommend watching this.

**New York**  
** 2012**  
** 2023 Timestream**

* * *

It was with the same determined and manic gleam in Tony's eye that spurned a churning feeling in his stomach. 

"I got it, there's another way—" Tony breathed in deep and nodded to slowly, as if convincing himself that it was going to work. "To retake the Tesseract and acquire new particles. We'll stroll down memory lane: Military installment, Garden State." There was a silent but noticeable harrumph in the end of the monologue. 

Steve had to hand it to Tony. He was right. 

"The particles, maybe. Yeah."

Scott's head whipped towards his direction and Tony was taken aback. 

"Uh, particles _and_ the Tesseract, Rogers. Weren't you listening?"

Steve nodded absentmindedly, his fingers cupping the base of his chin. "The particles were just made, a pet project by Hank Pym at the time. It had funding, but it wasn't SHIELD's cash cow, either." Steve still remembered the faint hum of the blue cube. "The Tesseract's a different deal—the rising competition for power in the 70's? No, it's too well guarded."

Tony crossed his arms and his face mirrored the gesture. 

"I don't believe this—fine, where do you think we should go?"

Scott's eyes flickered down to the time GPS on his wrist. The coordinates and year was already punched in and the younger man but back a gasp. "No!" his mouth formed a small o and Tony caught a brief glimpse and immediately shook his head. 

"What happened to sticking with the team?"

"It's the only way."

"Bullshit, it's the only way. New Jersey, 1970—flat out, the best option."

Steve lifted his gaze and stared blankly at Tony. "And risk being captured by Hydra-infiltrated SHIELD, altering history if they found out I'm alive?"

Tony didn’t back down, unwilling to give way. “Then I’ll go—alone.”

A sigh left him, too tired to pick a fight. “I need you to trust me, Tony. We can’t risk our only chance to make things right. For Queens,” the moniker rendered his friend to silence. “We need the Tesseract at its most convenient and this—” he pointed to his watch, the date just flashing at his teammates, “—is the most convenient day.”

Scott gave a sheepish squeak. "Cap's got a point."

Tony shook his head. "No, I refuse to take your opinion into consideration because you like his ass—" there was the slightest shade of pink on Scott's cheeks. "We stick together, Captain. No change in directive."

There was a pregnant pause, in the midst of New York. Steve slowly took out the compass in his pocket and flicked it open. "Whatever it takes." He reminded them softly. "We have to do whatever it takes." Steve held his hand out, eyes narrowed and jaw locked in a determined but blind hope that they'd make it out. "But we have to agree on this together—agree to do whatever it takes."

Tony glared at him, and for a second, Steve was scared that he wouldn't agree, but reluctantly thrusted his hand into the pile. “Fine,” he grumbled under his breath, eyes rolling in exasperation but clear agreement.

Scott's face split into a wide grin. 

"Ooh—go team!"

"So, what's the game plan?" 


	2. Relive

**Arctic Ocean**  
**March 10, 1945**  
**2023 Timestream**

* * *

It was one of those moments Steve where, no matter how hard he tried to not let it affect him, it would fail spectacularly.

That was how he felt, reminding himself of its necessity to travel back to 1945 and keep his mind on the mission.

He tried. God knows he did.

But the minute he materialized out of the quantum realm, the force of gravity re-entering his being, he couldn’t help but feel like the kid he had been before the serum: asthma often robbed him of his breath.

As he stood in an empty room on a ship, just as Howard was fishing out the Tesseract from the ocean, he couldn’t help but feel like the little guy all over again.

He couldn’t help but feel a sense of unending irony run through his mind. There he was, on a ship that had just found the damned cube and just a few clicks, just a few nautical miles was his younger self, probably still fighting the cold, asleep after a long struggle.

It was hard, trying to contain a sob that wracked his throat.

Knowing what he knew, Steve could so easily change history, make it so that he would have a life to live, bring back the people he knew. He could be found earlier, save himself from the pain of having to wake up in a world where everyone and everything he knew was gone.

He could save Bucky, spare him the pain of years and years of torturing and reconditioning. _Maybe_, he thought ruefully to himself, _he could bring Bucky home to Ma Barnes_.

And Peggy—his heart ached at the thought of her.

He could have that dance with Peggy.

But it couldn’t be helped. The mission he was on was far bigger than anything he ever stood for. What he had to do was far bigger than what he wanted, and yet he couldn’t stop the rushing of memories that flooded his senses.

He kept thinking, in the little moment he stood frozen in that little spot on the ship, still too shocked to process that _he was back_, of all the time he once had and now lost.

_It’s hard_, Steve thought to himself as he began to realize with a painful awakening that he wasn’t meant to stay, _it’s hard to battle an enemy you can’t exactly punch with your fist._

He couldn’t really punch his memories, now could he?

But as much as he wanted to lament of the times lost, to feel sorry for himself, it wasn’t the time to do so.

Steve stared at his watch with gritted teeth. He told Tony, to travel to his location in approximately thirty minutes. It would give him enough time to get the Tesseract and make it out of the building to travel back to 2023 and pull off the impossible.

**March 10, 1945**

The letters glowed a bright red. Crisp, the glowing icons danced and blinked at him, taunting him as it reminded him that there was a mission to finish.

A sigh left his lips before his free hand tugged on a switch located at the wrist band. Soon, his red-and-white time travel suit morphed into a familiar shade of white. Steve had seen the uniforms of the navy. It never felt right, though, wearing it.

Especially now—

_Project Rebirth; saving Bucky; meeting Peggy._

The voices lingered in his mind, the memories fresh, heart ached an all too familiar tug.

But he shook his head and began walking towards the heart of the ship. He had read the books. Howard was on his fifth day out in the arctic. He found the Tesseract on the third, but instead of going back, he wanted to bring someone home.

Howard wanted to bring him home.

As he walked through the cramp ship corridors, Steve passed through a few of the sailors who gave him a longer look than he would have like and he tried his best not to draw any attention for himself.

He tried to hide the clammy hands that seemed all too nervous, but he shook his head instead. 

Steve looked at his watch.

**23 Minutes**, it read.

He paced himself faster until he reached Howard’s dark laboratory, the room void and desolate of any people save for him.

Howard and the rest of the sailors were still at the bridge, calculating the trajectory of currents, where it would lead. Steve could try and tune in the sound of bickering.

Once situated in the dark, giving his eyesight enough time to adjust to the light, he fumbled about with the room, careful not to make any abrupt sound until he found it—a heavily enclosed chamber with its cracks glowing a brilliant blue so bright.

Carefully unloading the case, Steve deposited the Tesseract into his own lined case and began to make his way out of the workshop.

He had just barely made it out of the dark laboratory. The doors had clicked lock and twisted the knob closed. Steve found walking away a difficult chore, but he did anyways.

Then, by some odd twist of luck, there was a mechanical whir all of a sudden.

A loud pop sounded behind him and soon, footsteps were bouncing off the metal halls.

Steve turned around and groaned. “Tony?” he glanced at his watch. He still had fifteen minutes left.

“Hiya, Cap,” he smirked before dusting himself off the ground. “Miss me?”

“What did you do?” Steve narrowed his eyes as he helped Tony to stand up and started sprinting through a series of staircases. “And why are you hurt?”

Tony was silent, for a blessed minute, before the familiar confidence was blurted out again. “Aw, you worried for me, Rogers?”

The situation now became clear, the clear avoidance of the topic and the deflection. “Oh, God—you went after the Tesseract did you?” a groan sounded from behind him.

“Yes, fine. I tried to get the Tesseract. Turns out, SHIELD doesn’t like it very much when strange looking people try to steal their alien tech.”

They both panted as they reached the top of the staircase before heading out to an empty stretch of corridors, a door on the left looking like an isolated room to travel back to the future in.

“Follow me,” Steve grunted, clutching the briefcase in his hand and running towards the door, making sure to put as much distance between them and the group of sailors trying to capture them.

Steve slammed to the side, his shoulder painfully colliding with the metal door as it budged open. Tony quickly followed and locked the door, pressing an ear against the cold metal.

Moments passed, and Tony grinned. “We lost them.” He gave two thumbs up but Steve’s brows furrowed together. His eyes darting towards the door.

“No, we haven’t.” There was still voices that he could hear. Footsteps, albeit lighter, that tapped against the floor. “They’re still there.”

Tony was taken aback and shook his head. “No—we’re home free. Come on, let’s travel back.” The particle now appeared, the vial ready for his taking until there it was.

_Tip, tap._

A familiar clack of heels that he knew belonged to no one else.

He looked around the room, there was a desk and a picture of him, framed. It was taken at basic training, before the serum.

The pieces fell together into a slow but actualized realization.

Steve moved towards the other end of the room and realized he was just near the indoor observation deck. He peaked in close on the blinds, and soon enough, there she stood, bundled in warm clothes, eyes set on the horizon with Howard by her side, nursing an amber colored drink.

“God, is that Dad?”

Steve noted the warmness to Tony’s voice. A part of him wondered what happened in 1970 that changed him.

“Yeah.” He breathed out in response, but his eyes were fixed on Peggy.

It was a mixed bag of emotions, seeing Peggy so young and just like the way he remembered her. He closed his eyes, just for a second, and let the sound of her voice wash over him like a tune he could listen to all day.

“Steve,” Tony’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, and he hated how he knew where it was going. “We have to _go_.”

A tear ran through his face, throat tightened, and it mirrored how red rimmed Peggy’s eyes were. “I can’t.”

At first, there was understanding in his eyes but soon, a steely resolve formed, and Tony gripped his arm. “No.” He said forcefully, a shocking amount of pity and pain in his voice. “You _don’t_ get to do this. _You_ don’t get to say no. You made this plan, Cap, _not_ me—you chose _this date_, not me.”

Steve knew to himself that whatever moment of strength Tony had displayed was meant to spur him on the path of the mission. But as he stood before her now, the only thing standing between them was a partition and not the seventy years or death. . .he couldn’t move an inch.

“We have to go back, Cap.”

“Tell me,” he spoke up, voice gravelly. “If you were given a chance to relive a day, just one, would you really go about and do the same thing?” he turned to Tony, whose expression was unreadable. “Knowing what would happen—who you lost—would you really leave it at that? At one last look?”

Steve thought of Peggy that day.

He would have leaned in for another kiss.

He would have held her in his arms.

He would have told her he loved her with all of his heart.

He wouldn’t have wasted all that time and he would have made sure that she knew.

Instead, he didn’t do that. He didn’t lean in for another kiss. He didn’t hold her in his arms, and he never told her he loved her and a part of him wondered how much she knew.

His voice broke now. “Wouldn’t you want to do better?”

“Steve—”

“Queens. The kid, knowing everything, would you have told him? Would you have embraced him more? Let him know how much you love him or would you just stick by a script and follow that day exactly as it went on.”

There was a crossed look on Tony’s face, his eyes now brimming with tears. “That’s not the same. . .that’s not fair.”

Now, a level of understanding stood between them and a heavy realization. “Now,” he gasped out, breathless as he continued to watch Peggy. “Now, you know. You see?”

“I can’t let you stay here.”

He twisted his head and smiled sadly. “Just a few miles, off the coast of Greenland. There’s a cap of ice constantly changing. Almost twelve hours away.” He still thought of the cold, how it curled up to his spine in a chilling embrace. “I’m sleeping, waiting.”

“Cap—”

“You know, they found my footlocker. You know what I kept inside there?”

Tony gave him a pained wince. “Steve. . .”

“I had a ring in there. Bucky and I, on our last leave, we went out in town to find a ring. Ma had her own ring but we had to pawn it off to get by during the Depression.”

Steve let his fingers smudge the glass, capturing the sight before him. “It was incredibly lucky how we found a claddagh ring. I was going to ask her to dance after the train mission.”

Realization dawned on Tony. “Barnes fell.”

He nodded tersely. “When Bucky fell, Peggy was the one who picked up the pieces. She was the one who stood by me. I told her that I won’t stop until all of Hydra was either dead or capture, she told me I wouldn’t be alone.” He looked into his hand, the compass resting in his palm, Peggy’s face greeting him. “The mission to storm the stronghold, I planned to propose after that—guess that wasn’t in the cards for us.”

“She’s going to be fine. You know that.”

Steve took a deep breath and hiccupped. “I know that,” he said, broken and defeated. “I just don’t know if I ever will be—here I am, with the chance to make it all right: Bucky, the war, Howard. . ._Peggy_.”

“And you know you can never take it.” Tony finished softly.

Wordlessly, he nodded.

In a moment between them, Tony slipped the vial into his hands, taking the briefcase in turn. “I’ll give you a moment.”

Tony stepped back and soon, the mechanical whir sounded again, and everything was silent once more.

Steve just stood by the glass—Howard had long left the deck on the bridge and it was only him and Peggy left. She still stood by the edge and he had an urge to take her into his arms.

He knew how it would all play out.

After another day, they’d be forced to make way for New York. There, Peggy would disembark, just a day shy of their date and make her way towards the Stork Club, knowing that there would be no one to meet her there.

Howard would be asked to go to Washington. There would be a meeting on how to deal with the oncoming offensive from the Japanese from the east. There would be two solutions—one in Hiroshima and one in Nagasaki.

But all of that’s one day away.

Steve let his forehead rest against the glass and whispered, broken. “I’m sorry I’m going to be late for our dance.” A tear slid through his face. “You’d probably dance so beautifully.”

He lamented, how he once thought they’d dance under the stars but now, they live two entire worlds apart and a painful pang had twisted in his gut when he remembered the pictures in the nursing home.

Peggy had gone on to marry a soldier, built a life and a legacy. “I’m glad you found a dance partner.” Right at the moment, Peggy clutched herself, wrapping her arms around her.

Steve mimicked her actions, closing his eyes to imagine she was there in his arms. “I’m sorry we never had that dance.” He whispered, locking in the vial in place. “But I want you to know, I’ll be alright,” his voice choked up.

He dropped the compass on the panel, just barely keeping it steady before tapping his watch.

“Bye, Peg.” 


	3. Redo

**Arctic Ocean**   
**March 10, 1945**   
**2023 Timestream**

* * *

Steve panted against the glass partition of the wall. 

Time travel was still so new to him, unfamiliar no matter how many times he stood on the platform and jumped from one place to another.

But there he was, back in the spot he thought he left behind. His hand collided against something cool on the panels—it was his compass. 

Steve picked it up with great care, flicking it open as if he hadn't done it years. A palpable sense of relief exuded from him when Peggy's picture came to greet him. The fact that it stood the test of time and the compass pointed north, just where Peggy stood before him, seemed to gravitate to him that it was all some big sign the universe sent him.

He didn't mean to do this, to go back in time right after the fight. 

There was a mission: bring back the stones to their rightful time in history and go back to his family in 2023 with the Avengers. But something didn't feel right, especially when Pepper came to him, teary eyed with a willful expression on her face. She held out her hand and shoved into his palm a glass vial. 

It was an extra Pym Particle and a file. She tersely nodded at him and pointed him towards the platform. "Go live that life, Steve."

At first, he wanted to refuse. There was no way he could leave right after Tony, there was no way he'd leave the family he's made in the future behind for something in past that he couldn't be so sure of. But there was something in Pepper's eyes that he didn't see before. 

It was only when he asked the Ancient One what would happen if he were to stay in the past did he realize what it meant.

The file wasn't just any file pulled from a record. It was Peggy's and her family. 

Grant Joseph Stevenson—

The Ancient One gave him a wry smile. "Man out of time." She tipped around the words, a strange amount of lightness to it. 

That's how he ended back up at the ship, nearly a week after the fight that nearly devastated and decimated the universe. 

Steve's hand hovered above the doorknob and swallowed deeply. 

He had replayed 2012. Played by the rules and the script that was before him. 

He went back to 1945, to relive a day that could have changed everything. 

And now here he was, just moments away from changing his life—his and Peggy's—forever. 

Everything seemed so lost and broken the first time around, when seeing her just across the partition seemed like the last time he's ever going to be in her presence. But now it wasn't so broken anymore. What he thought he had lost, it's finally within his palm once more. 

All he had to do was open the door. 

Steve remembered Tony, about having to play by the rules, go with the script. He smiled to himself, a real one, for the first time in so long. 

He wasn't going to relive. 

He's going to redo. 

He's going dancing.

**Author's Note:**

> There was a comment in the section and it was profoundly deep and resonated with me, and I believe, with Steve Rogers as well. The comment read that given a chance to relive a day in your life, especially with hindsight and knowledge of what was to come, you wouldn't want to live by a script and do things the way exactly as they were—no, you want to do better. 
> 
> You don't want to just leave at that. You don't want to just relive, you want to redo.


End file.
